Abigail on the Classics

I am starting to feel my mortality.

I can sense within me that there is an intruder and that my own body has surrendered to it. Have you seen how an animal who has no will to fight lies down in front of its competitor and exposes its tender belly? Inviting its own defeat? This is how I see it, almost like a spectator watching from the last row in the arena. I am not in a war with the cancer. I am its spoils.

Lauren has stopped asking me to at least consider treatment. The treatment is not a cure, my dear Lauren, I told her, more than once. It will only delay the inevitable and fill those extra days with nauseating frustration. Besides. We are all appointed a time to exit. Most of us don't have the odd gift of knowing when it is. It is odd. And it is a gift.

Mercy's diary will probably be published after I am gone. I am quite fine with this. I won't have to wonder if Lauren and I did the right thing and not being able to do a thing about it. Even now
I still wonder.

The gallery is under construction and despite my money, influence and daily badgering, I may well be in my grave when it is finally finished, too. I am not quite so fine about that. Lauren took me to see the progress made so far. It is a great scraping of the earth and a huge slab of cement at the moment. Hard to believe it will be beautiful one day - a great white edifice of art and music and literature.

I am re-reading my favorite books while I still have the time. Today I am reliving the melancholy magic of Wuthering Heights. I can almost smell the heather . . .